The Game of Thrones production designers have always been top-notch, and they brought it again in season 7. What new sets stood out to us this year? Discuss.
DAN: I think I’m gonna take the obvious one. Dragonstone may not technically have been a new location, but the Game of Thrones production team sure as hell poured more resources into it this year. It almost makes you feel bad for Stannis — he never get to stare balefully in the direction of King’s Landing while standing on the castle’s winding staircase, or sit on its great stone throne. Honestly, if I got to choose to rule Westeros from either the Iron Throne or the one on Dragonstone, I’d probably go with Dragonstone — it looks more intimidating and more comfortable.
“I guess this’ll do.”
For season 7, the team built whole structures just for single shots. When Dany and company walk through the gates of the castle in the season premiere, we see that the entranceway is flanked by a pair of massive dragonhead statues. I don’t think we ever see them again, but they’re there, being awesome, and impressing upon us how significant this location is, both because it’s where Dany was born and because it’s where her ancestor launched his own invasion of the Seven Kingdoms centuries ago. All this new geometry isn’t here purely for show (although it’s certainly showy); it also shoulders emotional, historical, and narrative weight.
On top of that, it helps us understand the geography of Dragonstone better. In season 7, I knew where the beach was in relation to the stairway, where the stairway was in relation to the throne room, where the throne room was in relation to the map room, and so on. I never quite got that during Stannis’ time there, whether because the producers didn’t deem his plotline important enough or (more likely) simply because they didn’t have the necessary funds back then. In any case, Dragonstone felt alive and lived in during season 7 to an extent it never did before. If we don’t see it again in season 8, it went out on top.
RAZOR: I will go with a set that, for me personally, far exceeded the way it was described in the books: the vaults under the Red Keep where the dragon skulls are kept. Ever since learning about Aegon Targaryen conquering Westeros from the back of Balerion the Black Dread, and after reading about Arya Stark’s escapades in the vaults in A Game of Thrones, I have longed to look upon the great dragon’s skull. Season 7 fulfilled that longing.
The show’s prop department was on point as Cersei and Qyburn strode through the vast chamber, passing both the largest and smallest of the Targaryen dragon skulls left over from when Daenerys’ family ruled the Seven Kingdoms. But when Cersei stood in front of Balerion’s skull, his terrifying size jumped from the page to the screen in an amazing way.
Sadly, Balerion’s perfectly good skull was ruined when Qyburn fired a scorpion bolt in to it. But, luckily for Dany and Drogon, a scorpion bolt isn’t as deadly or accurate when fired at a moving target.
RICHARD: So many great sets on this show! I’ll go with the King’s Landing Map Room, which was small in comparison to many of the other sets, but so pretty. It was also an obvious physical manifestation of Cersei’s immense ambition: she inhabited that space for a large part of season 7 as she plotted her machinations and dreamed of conquering every inch of Westeros.
It’s interesting that the two major players who feel entitled to ruling the world have giant maps they can interact with: Cersei has her floor map, and Dany has her huge carved map table at Dragonstone. Jon Snow, on the other hand, doesn’t want the throne, and thus isn’t enamored with the idea of a territorial map.
As a funny aside, any fans of the sitcom Friends might remember Joey Tribbiani’s method of “getting into the map” (actually laying his tourist map on the ground and standing on it) in order to get oriented during a trip to London, and that was the first thing that jumped into my mind when I saw Cersei in her Map Room—she was literally “in the map,” just like Joey. Some GoT fans raised eyebrows here early on, with Cersei standing at the Neck and Jaime at the Fingers, suspecting the show producers were foreshadowing the ominous outcome of her Valonqar prophesy. And finally, remember the artist who was seen painting the incomplete floor map in the season 7 premiere? That’s actually Jim Stanes, the lead graphic artist for Game of Thrones.
All cool. What a beautiful set.
COREY: Without a doubt, season 7 was the most beautiful-looking season of the show. I’m not sure how having only seven episodes affected the budget for sets, but season 7 was leaps and bounds above what came before. All of the locations mentioned above were stunningly detailed and beautiful, and even places we’d seen for years, like King’s Landing, looking richer and fuller. I’d even go as far as to say that the sets in season 7 were so far ahead of the past seasons, that they almost looked out of place. Take my pick for best set: Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
We didn’t get as many interior shots of Eastwatch as we did of Castle Black over the years, but from the exterior, Eastwatch was downright gorgeous. From the switchback staircase that led to the top to the tapering of the Wall as it met the sea, Eastwatch was a more complete-looking castle. Even the watch-posts atop of the Wall, where Dany stood waiting for Jon, were more functional and detailed than those on Castle Black.
With the sort of detail put into each of the sets this year, it makes me wish we could go back to previous seasons with the same budget. With only six episodes in season 8, I can only imagine what the sets will look like.
